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With no hidden fees and a 100% purchase guarantee, you can feel confident when you book your premium LA tickets with Sweet Hop. Visit Swithop.com today. Today on Radical Personal Finance, it's live Q&A. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today on the show, we do live Q&A. That means open phone lines, go to the phone lines and talk about whatever you, or should I say these callers, want to talk about and see if together we can find some answers and solutions for their particular situations. Normally once a week, each week on Friday, we record a Q&A show and usually those are restricted to patrons.

You can become a patron of the show at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron for guaranteed access to that show. But I've been doing a series of shows that are open to the entire audience, which has been really fun. I've been speaking with some new callers and been taking some new questions. And today we begin in the Garden State.

Nam, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. How can I serve you today, sir? Nam, are you there? Nam is not there. All right, that was my fault. Nam, I can hear you now. Go ahead, sir, please. All right. So my question is more on a Roth IRA when it comes to alternative investing.

Right now, most of my funds are being, you know, through, it's being put through mostly index fund. I use Robovisor's company that, you know, mostly most of the funds that are Vanguard. And I come, I ran into a company here. What they do is they distress mortgage notes. They, you know, they have their own funds, a good return somewhere about 10 to 14% annually.

But when I asked them if they have a Roth account, they said that they don't have a custodial. And my question to you is that, you know, if you know, you know, the best route to pick a custodial for a Roth account for this, or can any advisor that or funds manager can actually, you know, take in these type of notes funds?

So they won't custodian any accounts or they just simply won't custodian a Roth account? They custodian a Roth account. They refer me to a few companies. But, you know, that's up to me to do the research. Right. They will refer me. But, you know, whether or not I just like to have every fund under a Robovisor account that I have here.

So then I can look at the performance a lot easier versus me trying to go to different accounts. So you're not going to get that. So basically you have the world of mainstream investing or you have the world of non-mainstream investing. So mainstream investing is going to be everything associated with Wall Street.

And so that's primarily going to be open-ended mutual funds. Sorry. Yeah. Open-end mutual funds or other associated products like that. And those are all going to be straightforward stocks that are publicly listed stocks. But you're not going to get anything that is non-mainstream through any kind of Roboadvisor or the mainstream custodians.

The Roboadvisors just simply play off the back of mainstream Wall Street. The market that you're talking about of going and investing in distressed mortgage notes is not mainstream. That's an area of specialized knowledge and insight that is going to be usually engaged in by real estate investors and those who are knowledgeable in their local area.

Now, the key is to recognize that there's no legal reason why you can't buy mortgage notes inside of a Roth IRA. All you have to do is you have to find a custodian who will help you do that. And this is a huge growing business. It's certainly not mainstream, but it's a growing business.

But there are lots and lots of custodians out there who will help you to set up what they call a checkbook IRA, a checkbook LLC. You'll create an LLC. That LLC will be held within your Roth IRA. And then you will have a checkbook for that LLC that you can use to basically write a check for whatever investments that you want to invest in.

Now, there are a bunch of prohibited transactions inside of IRAs. So you need to be very careful that you understand the rules. You need to do your research. But there's no reason why you can't buy distressed mortgage notes. But those will not link up with your RoboAdvisor software. They will not link up with your personal capital account or your Mint.com.

They will not import into Quicken or YNAB or any of that stuff. You will have to account for those in a separate system. They're not going to integrate. Wall Street packages everything. And if you want everything mainstream, then you'll get those pretty dashboards. But if you want to do anything long mainstream with hopefully get higher returns, it's going to look a little clunkier.

And that's the price you're going to pay for potentially higher returns. Okay. Now, for that company, the distressed mortgage notes servicing company, to actually move, take my money and put it in the custodial, is there any fees in those? Should I research on the fees that they take? I'm pretty sure there is wiring fees involved.

But other than that, are they all pretty much the same? No, they're not pretty much the same. So you will need to research the fees. And definitely there will be fees. They're not going to work for free. Nobody works for free. And they shouldn't work for free. And if anyone tells you they're working for free, run away because they're not.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. I've heard economists say you can figure out about anything you need to know by asking someone if they believe there's such a thing as a free lunch. But what's the acronym they like? Tan Staffel. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

So you just need to understand what those fees are and how they're going to be charged and assessed. And the fees will range from sales fees, commissions, whether they're selling the notes on a specific flat rate or a spread of some kind. The fees will range to all of the account fees.

So what are they going to charge you for account custodianship? What are they going to charge you for wiring fees? You'll also pay fees to your custodian. So you'll pay fees for them to hold the Roth IRA with them. You'll pay fees for their servicing on the bank accounts that are associated with it.

So yes, you will pay fees. You just need to calculate those fees, understand what they are, and then make sure that you are still going to have a higher expected rate of return even when those fees are calculated in compared to your alternative investments. Okay. So just to be clear, there will be fees on the custodial side and also there's fees from the note servicing side too.

Right. Everybody that you work with is going to charge you fees. That's normal. And you wouldn't want it any other way, right? Why would you trust somebody who's not going to charge you a fee for their work? Yes. So your job is to look at those fees, to shop those fees, try to understand, "Is this the best deal that I can get for good service?" And make sure that you are aware of them and then in time those fees will come down as more people start to compete with one another and you may move from here to there over the years just like everyone else does.

But yes, you are going to pay fees. Understood. Understood. All right, Josh. Thank you very much. My pleasure, sir. We go now to the great state of Colorado. David, welcome to the show. How can I serve you, sir? Hey, Josh. My question's a little bit non-financial related. It's more an investment of time and human capital.

So I am mid-30s. I have an MBA and I have a slight desire. Well, I always teeter-totter between if I should pursue a CFA. Like I said, I have an MBA, but it'd be more just for my own… I don't have any desire to get into asset management necessarily.

My actual more interest is probably more on the personal finance side and just investing, kind of saving and more of the fire community. But I do like understanding the investments. And so I just thought I'd get your opinion on taking something like that on. I know obviously it takes a lot of hours and a lot of money as well.

So I don't know. Any thoughts? Could you ever see yourself using it? Meaning, would this be a backup career for you in case you lost your existing career? Could you ever see any professional use for the credential? Yeah, I mean there are some scenarios where maybe it plays out.

But I guess, yeah, when I say that at the moment I don't have any desire right now to go run into asset management or anything. But given my background and things that I've done in the past with being in a corporate development role and stuff like that, I could see myself maybe leveraging that in the future if the opportunity arose.

If you are just engaging in self-study without pursuing a specific degree, are you effective at teaching yourself the knowledge that you want to learn? Or do you need the structure of a degree program to keep you accountable? That's part of the problem. I think it is helpful to have a degree program where I kind of get a little bit just, you know, what's the point?

That sort of thing. So having the targets and stuff like that is helpful for me. I guess my short answer is I don't much see the point of your pursuing a chartered financial analyst credential unless you actually wanted to work in the business. It's certainly an extremely prestigious credential.

It is very, very challenging. And anybody who has examined the curriculum would respect you for your academic competence to pursue it. And they really would admire that. The CFA is one of the gold standards of credentials in the financial arena. But it is not at all easy, which probably just makes you want it all the more.

That was always my thing. You tell me something is easy and I don't care. But you tell me this is really tough and it's like, "Oh, okay. Well, I'll go do that." So I seriously thought about pursuing a CFA credential. But I ultimately came--for me, I came to the perspective that I just didn't care about the content because the CFA is very much investments focused.

It's all about analyzing investments. And that to me is relatively uninteresting. You know, the basic areas that the CFA curriculum focuses on is--well, let me just read it right from their website. They have ethical and professional standards, blah, blah, blah. Quantitative methods, from time value of money analysis to correlation analysis and regression.

Learn robust quantitative methods. Economics, delve into supply and demand, the monetary system, inflation, effects of government regulation, and much more. Financial reporting and analysis, learn the details of the financial reporting system with an emphasis on international standards, IFRS, and analysis of taxes, debt, global operations, and more. Corporate finance, equity investments, fixed income derivatives, alternative investments, and portfolio management and wealth planning.

So this--the Chartered Financial Analyst credential is very clearly focused on investment analysis. So you said that you have an interest in personal finance. The CFA is not about personal finance. It's about investment analysis. So you might benefit from the information. And if you don't have another studied--you know, another study program that you're engaging in, it certainly could be of help to you.

But if your interest is in personal finance, the CFA will not serve you in that. Where I could see it is if you are interested in investments, you like it, you could sign up for it, and you could benefit from that structured curriculum. And if you like to have it as a backup career plan, then I think it certainly is very, very helpful.

Because if you were to go into the investment marketplace with an MBA and a CFA, you have a lot of career doors that are open to you with that credentialization. So it's just a matter of how much you like studying investments. Yeah. Okay. No, thank you for your time.

Yeah. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. It seems like every year I kind of waffle a little bit between going, "Oh, should I do that or should I not?" Obviously, the CFP has also come up, given the interest in personal finance. But I don't necessarily want to go be a financial advisor either.

So, yeah. Anyway, that's kind of where I'm at. Other than your MBA, do you have any other credentials in the financial space? I did in the past. I did have a Series 7, Series 63, but that expired. Yeah. Just my thought on credentials, and obviously I got a bunch of them, but they were important to me at a time in my life where I felt like I was kind of fighting for recognition.

They were especially important to me when I was young. I was so young working as a financial advisor that I didn't have the confidence that more mature men and women would have simply due to their age. And so I felt the need to burnish my confidence by excessive over-credentialization.

And that really helped me at a stage in time. But today, being older, I don't need that. I don't care. My confidence is not based on those credentials and degrees. Now, if I were actively – I dropped my CFP credential because why am I going to maintain this thing and pay them their hundreds of dollars per year when anybody who wants to know if I'm competent or not can listen to 15 minutes of Radical Personal Finance?

So, the only reason I would have it is if I were actively working in the business. Beyond that, it just becomes burdensome to stay current on all your continuing education, to pay them their annual fees. You look at it and you say, "Okay, am I going to pay them whatever – I don't know what the CFA fees are, but am I going to pay them every year their $500 to maintain this thing that I'm not even putting on a business card that nobody really knows about?" It just doesn't seem like there's that much benefit to it compared to the cost.

And I would say the problem with programs like the CFA is you really only need a structured program if you want to have a broad-based view of the market. So, let's say that you are super interested in – I mean, do you have an area of investment interest that's interesting to you personally?

I don't know. I've been getting into a little bit more like investing in value stocks and dividend sort of stocks, but no, I don't at the moment. But I've been reading some books on that. So, to your point, I could really dive in more on that. Right. And so, that kind of thing will appeal to your area of interest.

And when you don't go through a program, if you're just investing your own money, you can read closer to your interest. So, if you're interested in value investing, then you can read books on value investing, learn the information. And if you recognize, "You know what? I've got a hole in my understanding in this area," then go and get the textbook on that.

But go to eBay and look up the CFA textbooks and go buy them on eBay from somebody who's selling the version from 10 years ago. It'll be just as current. Value investing hasn't changed in 100 years. There's no difference that's going to happen in 2018 versus 1918. So, you can get that textbook there and work your way through it.

The only place that I would go for – I mean, personally, for credential like a CFA is if I were – let's say I were an expert investor, but I were starting a mutual fund. Then I would go ahead and get a CFA. I would want to make sure that I had that professional representation to it.

But otherwise, it's just – it seems kind of a waste of time. If you're just investing your own money, it seems kind of a waste of time to get all that other information that's not relevant to your own personal situation. So, if you want it, go for it. But it does come with cost.

Just recognize a lot of cost of time, a lot of cost of money, and it costs money to maintain. So, make sure you really want it before you keep it around. Yeah, exactly. And then I don't know. Do you have another caller on the line? I do not. So, go ahead.

You can ask another question if you like. Yeah, one other one. So, I've been basically not maxing out my 401(k), but I've only been contributing to a 401(k), and I've been lately thinking about, "Hey, should I move – add some percentages more to the Roth 401(k)?" And I saw your – well, I heard you the other day on your Q&A sort of talk about you think it's more beneficial now to get the tax break.

And I kind of agree because you're taking it off the highest earnings you can, the highest tax rate. I don't know. Can you elaborate a little bit more? How should I balance that out? Because it's obviously nice to also kind of have some less tax-free, right? I guess it's good to have a balanced way to have some flexibility when you get older, depending on what you want to do.

Right. So, here is my argument in a nutshell as to why I don't love a Roth 401(k) for most people. We begin with a simple analysis of the numbers involved. If you earn $1 today and you pay 20% tax on it, thus investing 80 cents, and then you take that money out tax-free in 20 years, you will have exactly the same spendable income as if you earn $1 today, invest $1, and then take out all the money in the future and pay a 20% tax in the future.

So, that's the first thing that has to be established mathematically. Most people believe that a Roth is superior because they'll have less money, sorry, they'll have more money because they're not paying tax on the growth. But that's simply not true. It is mathematically identical. If you are in the same tax bracket, and if tax rates are the same, there is no savings, one way or the other, of a Roth 401(k) versus a traditional 401(k).

Agreed? Agreed. Okay. Now, let me be clear. We're talking here about a 401(k). So, there are differences between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA. Those differences are not the amount of money you have. Those differences, rather, are the flexibility of the account or the protected status of the account or the fact that you can contribute to an IRA regardless of income level, but you're capped to contribute to a Roth IRA, etc.

So, there are differences there, but that's not due to the taxation. So, if you're in the same tax bracket, and if tax rates are the same today as they are 30 years from now, and you're in the same tax bracket 30 years from now, and the tax rates are the same 30 years from now, then your tax considerations of a traditional 401(k) versus a Roth 401(k) are irrelevant.

Next, let's talk about tax rates because this is the hard one. What will tax rates be 30 years from today? What do you think, David? This is the thing, right? I tend to think they will go up, but everyone has their own opinion, right? Right. So, everyone has their own opinion, and your opinion is every bit as good as mine.

Let me ask you instead of saying. David, why do you think tax rates will go up? I mean, look at our debt situation. I just think they're going to have to raise more money to service the debt. Right. So, can you imagine a situation looking at the voting populace today?

Can you imagine a scenario in which the US American public will vote for and follow through on higher tax rates? Well, it's hard for me to put people in other people's place. I know I won't, but I know there's probably a lot of people that will. I think there's a lot of good people out there, though, that think that it's important to do that.

Especially if you start thinking about, if the scenario comes up like, "Oh, if we don't raise taxes, we're going to default on our debt," right? Then, yeah, people will be like, "Oh, we got a service that we're not going to be defaulting on our debt." So, I think your guess is an entirely reasonable argument.

It's not my own opinion, and I'll tell you my opinion. So, here's what I observe. There are changes in tax rates from time to time, but those changes are at the margin, and they don't really matter all that much. So, what if tax rates, you know, the highest marginal bracket went from, what was it, 43.6%?

If we included the, something like that, 43%? If we included the Obamacare tax, it went through 39-point-something percent. Under the Trump tax reform bill, the highest marginal bracket is, was it 37 now, or 35, something like that? Yeah, 36, 38, somewhere in there. So, what's the difference between 36 and 37 and 39?

The most meaningful thing there is the 3.8% Obamacare tax. So, this stuff is, yes, they change, but there's no really meaningful difference. And years ago, I read a chart, I think it was Gary North, it was his chart that he put forth. And he basically said, if you look forward, look at, look back, over the last 70 or 80 years of tax rates, the level of taxation in the United States has been basically constant as measured as a percent of GDP.

And I looked at that, and I said, you know what? It's hard to argue with that. That yes, there's ditherings on the margin, but there's not really been that much meaningful situation. I don't think anybody would actually imagine that, yeah, we're going to go back to 90% tax, the highest marginal tax break is going to go back to 90%, like it was 50 years ago.

I can't imagine that. The other thing that I have watched, I'm old enough now to watch the political arguments. And what I have observed is, in the political arguments, there is supposedly a difference between Democrats and Republicans with regard to taxation. Supposedly, Republicans stand for lower taxation, and supposedly, Democrats stand for higher taxation.

But what I've seen is every economic crisis that has happened in my life, all of the Democrats' arguments are shut up, and they vote for lower taxes. Now, when I look at that, I say, basically, yes, it gets them votes when they say we're going to raise taxes on the rich.

But that's just a vote-getting scheme. It's not like they actually do much, and President Obama did not actually do much. And that's the thing. So you've got to look at what people actually do, not what they say. I'm preparing a show on Puerto Rico as an example. So Puerto Rico, you have this awful economy, and the show is on the tax incentives that are down in Puerto Rico.

I want to go through them and make sure that my audience knows about them. But it's almost like the perfect expression of a disaster, of an absolute economic disaster. You have a nightmare scenario of an island nation that is utterly bankrupt, defaulting on their debt. Their economy is in shambles.

Unemployment is through the roof. And yet you have a hardcore, fairly strong left-wing political environment. And yet, what are they doing to try to revive their island economy? They cut tax rates, and they come out with all kinds of incentive programs and tax programs of 0% tax rates, 4% tax rates, 4% corporate rate, 4% rate on income, 0% capital gains rate.

They're doing everything they can to attract business and people to the island. So yes, they still have all of their left-wing rhetoric, but at the end of the day, it's rather obvious that if we just spout all this left-wing rhetoric, all the rich people are going to leave. Now, look at the United States.

And all around the world, you can find countries who have much lower tax rates, who have stable environments, and you look and you see rich people and companies all around the world who are moving. So rhetoric notwithstanding, that just gets votes in the United States. It doesn't actually change.

So is the national debt a problem? We're running a trillion-dollar deficit this year, and there's no sign of that changing at all. It is an absolute nightmare in the United States. Is that going to be fixed by higher taxes? It can't be fixed only by higher taxes. It's not possible.

So will taxes go up? Maybe so, but I cannot see the scenario in the current situation at which middle-class people actually vote for tax increases on themselves. It's always about we're going to put tax increases on the rich, and that will never work because the rich will simply pull up their stakes and they'll move to another country with lower taxes.

And you see that happening all over the place. It's what happens in every single state. Why are there so many New Jerseyans or whatever they're called and New Yorkers, and why are there so many people living in Florida? Well, it's a simple competition. And so you look, and you look back at each of the little states in the United States, and you analyze this, and though they put forth the rhetoric of saying we're going to increase taxes, when they do it, all the millionaires leave.

So I think we're in a global environment now, and I don't see how tax rates could change all that much. Now, could I be right? Could I be wrong? I don't know, but that's my argument. Yeah, that's fair. So since we don't know about tax rates and we're basically guessing, then we have to go to something that we can predict perhaps a little bit better, which is tax bracket.

And the question is, which tax bracket am I likely to be in now versus which tax bracket am I likely to be in during retirement? And here's my simple argument. For most people who are employed and contributing money to their 401(k) out of employment income, out of earned income from a job, it's very difficult to conceive that they will have more income in retirement than while they're working.

That just almost never happens. First, because in order for you to have more income in retirement than while you're working, you would have to have enough in your investment portfolio that your earnings from that portfolio are in excess of your earned income, and that's hard to do. Absent very high investment returns, most people who are investing in a 401(k) are not generating high investment return.

They're generating market returns or sub-market returns. So most people are not growing their wealth at 15% per year. If you're putting 30 grand in per year and growing it at 15% over a 40-year career, yeah, you could have a lot more money in your retirement account so that you could actually have a higher income sometimes than your earned income.

But most people are not in that situation. They're making 5% on their money, and they're not putting in all that much over time. So just the average employed person is not going to have more money. The second reason why I say that is most people don't have any use for more money in retirement than they do while they're working.

Usually, if somebody is working, they have a lot of expenses that are associated with their working. Their car, they have to live in a certain kind of house, they have to buy certain kind of clothes. Usually, when somebody is working, they're caring for children. So they have child care costs, they're maintaining larger houses, larger vehicles to care for their children.

They usually, when somebody is working, they're paying for educational costs, they're paying, saving for college or paying for college or paying for private school. So usually, when someone is working, they're going on expensive vacations. They're doing all those things. Now, when somebody moves into retirement, most retirees spend less in retirement than they did while they were working.

Not that they couldn't spend more, it's just that they usually don't because their expenses go down, their children are on their own, they don't have all of those expenses. And they look around and how many times are we going to go skiing every year? How much are we actually going to golf?

So most people won't keep working so that they can have more money in retirement than they will when they're working. So it's that argument that makes me say we can basically look and say that most people will be in a lower tax bracket in retirement than while they're working.

And so for that reason, I think most people are better served to not pay taxes while they're working in a higher bracket and better to pay those taxes in retirement when they're in a lower bracket. Does that make sense? That makes perfect sense. Yeah. So that's my argument. Now, hopefully, it should be clear that there are exceptions.

So I have clients who are business owners and I tell them, "Listen, if you're building a business, then there's a very good chance that throughout your life, if you're doing it well, not only will your net worth always go up, but your income will always go up. And so in that situation, it might very well be that today is your very best time for you to pay the tax because then you can always have this tax-free growth.

And it's not that you're in a low tax bracket right now. It's just that when we run your net worth calculations, you're worth $3 million today. A year from now, you can expect to be worth $8 million. But another decade, you're not spending all your money now. So another decade, it'll be 20, it'll be 30, it'll be 50.

And when you start to get into that situation, it's not possible for you to get into that lower bracket, per se. So things are very different if somebody is a business owner or a very highly paid professional than if they are just a straightforward, ordinary employed person. Or there are counter arguments like what tax bracket are you actually in right now?

If I'm working with somebody who is, let's say, a newly minted – a physician who's in residency. A physician who's in residency might be earning $70,000 or $80,000 per year. But if life goes as we think it will, they're going to be in a higher tax bracket for basically the rest of their life.

So if someone's in residency, I would say, "Listen, as long as you're doing this, do the Roth 401(k) version. Go and pay the tax now because it's almost inconceivable that you'll ever have this chance again in the future." Someone in their 20s, et cetera, people who are younger. So I look at that and say, "If you're in your 20s, you're not earning a lot of money, do the Roth 401(k) because you're probably going to be in higher tax brackets from here going forward." And that advice changes.

But that's the basis of my personal argument on that. We can't know tax rates. So if you have a strong conviction one way or the other, go ahead and go for it. But here's my problem. Let me make one more comment on Roth taxation versus tax rates. Tell me what you think would be more politically appealing in a bankrupt country, that the Roth IRA rules are changed and we put on means testing and we say, "Hey, any account that's in excess of $500,000, we're going to go ahead and tax those gains in some way." Is that more politically palatable or is it more politically palatable that tax rates are doubled on the entire population?

The Roth. That's what I think. So those things are considered to be a tax loophole. They're on a list of tax expenditures. So all the little tools that we use, such as retirement account contributions or the deferral of taxation on the inside buildup of life insurance cash values or the real estate deductions for mortgage interest or the Section 121 exclusions, there's a long list of tax expenditures.

And these are maintained by the congressional staff and you can just look at those tax expenditures and recognize that Congress knows, "Hey, these are called tax expenditures. These are tax breaks that we're offering." So if you think tax rates are going to go up, I don't see why you can trust that Roth taxation won't come.

I don't see why you can trust that 401(k) rules will be the same. How could you possibly trust that those things would be static? I don't think you can. So that's my argument. Without the numbers behind it, I think they're common sense arguments, which means that in general, I think it's a mistake for people who have the option to contribute to a Roth 401(k) and I think it's better for them to contribute to a traditional 401(k) and if they want to do, after they've done traditional 401(k) contributions, if they additionally want to make Roth contributions and they qualify with an income below the necessary amount, an income below, what is it, almost $200,000, $180,000 or something like that?

Then at that point, go ahead and do a Roth IRA contribution in addition to your traditional 401(k) contribution because then you get the benefits of it actually being on the IRA, not in the 401(k). Okay. Great. Good question. Anything else you want to ask, David? No, I think that takes care of me.

Thank you. My pleasure. Before I go on to another question, just one more example for you. I know that my own commentary is often inflammatory because if you believe what politicians say, if you believe they're serious about it, then probably my comments on saying, "Look what they actually do," is insulting because when you actually look at what somebody does, then you're forced to sometimes have a problem because you have to analyze, "Wait a second.

That's disappointing." For example, if you voted for President Trump because you thought he was actually going to build a wall, how's that working out for you? Or if you voted for President Obama because you thought that he was going to actually pull out of the world, out of all of the military conflicts, how did that work out for you?

Go back and look at the facts. On taxation, I say exactly the same thing. If you believe that somebody says they're going to cut taxes, read my lips, no new taxes. How'd that work out? President Clinton said, "I won't raise taxes." So, President Reagan, you just go back. And on the Republican side, on the Democratic side, basically, in my opinion, just ignore what people say and look at what they actually do and judge based upon that.

Or just very recently, you look at, go back and think about what happened with the announcement of the new headquarters, the second headquarters for Amazon. Go back and think about what actually happened. So, who is the enemy of the people who ascribe to politically left ideology, people who self-identify as Democrats?

Well, it's big business, right? Big business and corporations. Is there anybody else out there who would perhaps be a bigger target than the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos? And one of the biggest companies in the world, Amazon? And yet, go back and look. What did the state of New York and Virginia, what did these states, who are very Democratic-controlled states, what did they give up?

What did they offer to try to attract Amazon to build their headquarters? Massive corporate tax cuts. So, it's a little hard for me to listen to Senator Schumer in the United States when he says, "We're going to do all of these big things against the rich," and then to go and say, "Well, what did Senator Schumer do in his own state with Amazon?" Massive corporate tax cuts.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's crony capitalism at its finest. The cabal of government authorities and business leaders working together for self-enrichment. Does that change magically in the next couple decades? I don't see how. So, if the population votes for politicians, generally, lower class, middle class people, if they vote for politicians, why would they vote to tax themselves more?

And if the rich people control the government, why would they vote to tax themselves more? So, how then does higher, meaningful higher taxation get passed? Now, you've got to play smoke and games. You have to actually, you know, again, President Obama, "We're going to raise the marginal rate 2%." Oh, big deal.

"We're going to add this 3.8%," whatever, "3.8% tax." Yeah, like that makes a lot of difference. Come on. You're going to end up with, "Wow, we built 22 miles of border wall," because it's a renovation of what was previously there. Because President Trump, "I'm going to market what, look at the border wall I'm building." It's nonsense.

It's lies. But yet, it's lies that appeal to people. It makes them think, "Well, look, they're doing what they said." They're stuck. Politicians are stuck. They're trapped by decades and decades of situations. So, do I worry about higher tax rates? I don't. And if I did, as I just said to David, if I did worry about that, I don't know how to plan for that, except don't keep all your assets in the United States.

Now, one more call. So, one more question. Andy writes in and says, "Joshua, I know you prefer live calls, but it's very difficult for me to get away from work for an hour or more for a Q&A call. If you happen to need questions, again, I'd love to hear your thoughts on balancing privacy and functionality in building a business.

As a specific example, I use mySudo for all my phone needs, and I also use a VPN, a virtual private network. This results in sometimes having a lot of difficulty establishing and maintaining a voice connection, as you've probably experienced. I recently rented out a house, and doing business over that phone line for potential tenants was much more challenging than it would have been over a conventional phone line.

I could see where that and maybe a few other things I do for privacy in the vein of Justin Carroll's advice could cripple attempts to start certain types of businesses. I'd just like to hear your thoughts on the balance between branding and being available, and that sort of good business practice in maintaining personal privacy.

Also as context, I desire to be an engaged, valuable member of my community, not a person whose neighbors have no idea of their name. Thanks, Andy." Well, Andy, good questions. And so, in what you've written, I hear two basic questions. One is your discussion of technological challenges, and your second is a discussion of what I'll call philosophical challenges.

And let me answer them in that order. The technological challenges are, in my opinion, somewhat easier to handle. The philosophical ones are harder. But there is a conflict between pursuing personal privacy in the vein of what Justin teaches and what other privacy enthusiasts pursue, and also business results and business effectiveness.

And here I think you have to take an honest analysis to try to understand what your threat model is. So if, for example, I were working in law enforcement and my job were to work as a detective and I'm putting murderers behind bars, there's an obvious much higher personal threat profile than if I'm working as a real estate agent.

And if I'm working as a detective, putting people behind bars, there's less of a financial impact of somebody not being able to perfectly get a hold of me than if I'm working as a real estate agent. And so I think that needs to be considered in even what you do and how you pursue it.

For a detective, yes, could it be a problem if somebody's trying to contact them and brings in a hot tip? Yeah, it could be. They could be able to be gotten a hold of reliably. But it's a much bigger problem for that real estate agent who's calling this person, calling that person, etc.

And if they're not available when they need to be, then they've got a bigger problem. So I think you have to look at the actual lifestyle and consider this. I use Sudo. I like Sudo a lot. Sudo is an application for iPhone, for iOS currently, although I think they're working on an Android model that allows you to have multiple phone numbers that you can use as different, basically, profiles, different profiles.

So you give out different phone numbers for different people. And I think this is a wonderful idea. It's a lot easier than always carrying around two or three physical devices. It's a lot cheaper than carrying around two or three physical devices and it's a lot more flexible than carrying around multiple cell phones just so you can have different points of connectivity.

So you can use Sudo, for example. You can use one number for your family and friends. You could give another number to your tenants in your real estate business. You could have a third number that your banks have. You could have a fourth number that you use when you're selling things on Craigslist, etc.

And I think that's -- it's just -- it's wonderful. I love to see those things being developed. I hope that in the future there are dozens and dozens of apps like Sudo that allow people to have these calling situations. I've used Sudo for years and I find it a tremendously useful tool.

But it's not as reliable as a traditional phone line using the cell phone's baseband radio to connect with the towers and use bringing calls in -- calls and text messages in over the traditional network. It is absolutely not as reliable. And so you will have problems establishing communication. Now I think there are a couple of ways that this is going to be solved.

Number one, I think that -- I don't think that apps like Sudo are the future necessarily. Apps like Sudo are useful for interacting with the traditional, basically, wired connections that happen in the U.S. telephony system. But that's not the future. If you go and you look at many parts of the world, everything is app-based, usually WhatsApp.

So the biggest, most used app in the world is WhatsApp. And in most countries outside of the United States, WhatsApp is the primary communications methodology. You don't give people your specific cell phone number that's tied to a SIM card. You give people your WhatsApp number. And that's wonderful because you can turn on the SIM card or turn it off.

You're never connected to that particular phone. That's what I love about Sudo. Sudo allows me to swap out any plan I want, any phone I want. I can change all those things anytime I want. I've gone months without even having a phone connected to my cell phone because since I don't use any kind of postpaid service, everything I do is prepaid.

And so to me, the SIM card and what provider it's with doesn't even matter a bit. And again, I've gone months where I'm just primarily in a place where I had a Wi-Fi, a stable Wi-Fi connection where I just didn't even bother to pay a phone line for those months.

And yet no one ever knew. My friends never knew, et cetera, because I communicate with them using apps, using apps like Signal, using apps like Wire, using their others, Wicker, Threema, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger is what many people use. And I think more and more as we see the impact of these more mainstream apps are having, importantly, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, if you look at the impact of these mainstream apps are having, more and more people are moving to that platform.

So I don't think Sudo necessarily is the future, although I hope that they're incredibly successful because they provide a really useful service now. I think the app-based system is going to be much stronger in the future. But it's not good enough to do something like run a stable business where you need to be gotten a hold of if you're a doctor, if you're on call, if you get important calls.

So I don't think that's the end of privacy. It just means that you've got to consider differently what you are doing. If I were running a business and I were looking for privacy, I would not try to do it with a cell phone based solution. Rather, I would go to a business voice over IP solution.

And that's personally how I would handle it. Now, in small business, I think one of the best solutions here would be UMA. So UMA is a technology that basically you connect it to your internet device and then you connect a standard phone line to that internet device and you use UMA as your phone system.

UMA has the benefit of being built for people who are not technologically savvy. So Justin Carroll and Michael Bizzell, they might have the patience to sit and deal with Sudo. And then when you turn your VPN on and your VPN changes servers that it's working on, all of a sudden your call drops and you can't get the message through.

They have the patience to deal with that. But most people don't. And what's happened is the voice over IP technology has gotten so good. You look at the customer reviews for normal people, you know, the 55-year-old, the 65-year-old person who's not super technologically savvy. And it is very, very good.

And so I think you are better served to look to a solution like UMA or many of the competitive business phone systems and just run them through a wireless network. So UMA sells devices that are both hardwired and that are run through the wireless system. And again, the precursor to this was MagicJack.

You can still use MagicJack. There are other competitors today as well. But you can run your business through that kind of system. And I think you could still do that and have tremendous privacy. So one of the ways that I think you could do it if you were looking for privacy is go ahead and establish your internet network.

Put a hardwired firewall system on your network, on your actual internet network. And make sure that you're putting a VPN on your actual router so that everything, all of your internet traffic that's passing through that firewall is passing through your router. I think that protects all the internet signals and all the internet traffic.

Now you should additionally run VPN on your computer, on your phone, etc. But that protects all of the traffic that's going through your network. And then add on to that a device like UMA, especially one that hardwires to your router. That UMA device does not have, doesn't have a microphone on it.

It doesn't have a computer where the camera can be accessed remotely. It's just basically another box. And then by running it through your hardwired firewall and your VPN, you now are protecting that phone signal from interception on the way through. Then just plug into that a phone. And of course you could use a wireless phone, which would give you a danger of a signal, though it's encrypted or coded.

But if you wanted to just run a wired phone into that UMA box. Then you would have a reliable phone system that is not subject to the same risks that just purchasing a phone system from AT&T running to your house is. But you have a much, much higher level of reliability than you would with an app like Sudo.

That's the kind of solution that is appropriate for a business. Now if you go and survey business phone systems, you'll find tons of these people out there that offer this kind of voice over IP system. And so the other nice thing that they offer is they offer their own apps.

They offer their own voicemail systems. They offer their own ways for you to actually interact. And so UMA has a voice over IP app that you can add to your phone. Grasshopper or whoever the competitor of today is, all these companies have the voice over IP app that you can add to your phone.

So you can listen to your inbox. And then what you do I think is you train your customers to interact with you in the way that's best for you. So have them leave you a voicemail. That voicemail will be transcribed and then you can respond to them via text.

Many people today would prefer to work with text and texting is very reliable with Sudo. So just train your customers to work with you in the best way possible or train them to use a voicemail line instead of expecting the call to be answered. So if you're trying to reach out to potential tenants, then leave them the information on the voicemail.

So you can work to train them in a way that is helpful. So there are many solutions out there and I would not -- and if a solution is not working for you, I think you need to junk it and move on to something that does work for you.

Now you write also about the problem with branding and being available, etc. Yes, absolutely. There is a conflict here between privacy and publicity. There's a conflict. There's a built-in conflict between privacy and publicity. And so either you can solve that conflict in some way or you will have to compromise.

So for example, maybe you're concerned about privacy in your interactions with real estate. Well, now maybe your better solution is to go ahead and hire a management company. You might not want to pay the 10% fee, but you could avoid the problem by just going ahead and hiring a management company.

And your tenants don't have a relationship with you. They have a relationship with your management company. So there are solutions, but there's always going to be a compromise. When you get into the world of marketing and branding, there are problems. For example, I don't maintain any presence on Facebook at the moment.

And I'm deeply offended at Facebook and what they do. And I don't want to support them. I don't want to be involved in them. I don't want to do anything with Facebook. But I still have a Facebook profile and I still have a Facebook page. And I have struggled with that for a long time.

I haven't logged on to Facebook in seven months and I have been so happy to be away from Facebook. It has been so nice to be out of that toxic world. But I still haven't deleted it. And it comes down to this problem. I don't want to support Facebook.

I don't want to be involved with Facebook. I think the vast majority of my listeners would be much better served by deleting their Facebook profile and completely being out of their world. But yet, I know how powerful Facebook can be for marketing. I know that I'm probably walking away from hundreds of thousands of dollars of income by not using Facebook as a marketing channel.

So how do I solve that? Do I say, "Yes, I'm going to go all in on Facebook marketing. And yeah, I don't like to be there, but at least ultimately if people are finding my content and they're finding my business, then maybe they're actually being helped. And so, yeah, I'm making this compromise over here, but it's actually ultimately a good thing." Or do I say, "No, I'm going to be a purist.

I'm going to be the delete Facebook guy." Since I haven't come to an answer on that, that's why everything just sits in limbo. My page is unattended. My group is unattended. My profile is unused. And I just haven't made that decision yet. I'll ultimately go in the direction of deleting it, but the other reason is because I don't trust Facebook to be-- they don't do anything in my best interest.

If I were to go and invest time and resources into building any kind of Facebook platform, now next month Facebook will change it, and then they'll start charging more money or they'll delete me for some reason. And so I've lost trust in them, and that makes the decision a little easier.

But I still haven't made it. So the point is that there are so many of these problems. And I think that there is an absolutely difficult concern with regard to privacy and the philosophy of privacy. I feel exactly the same way as you do. I don't want--I'm not by nature a private person.

I've shared--I've tried--I don't have anything to hide. I don't have anything that I'm ashamed of, and I'm not trying to hide anything. And so I would just assume live my life as an open book, share my successes, share my struggles, share my wins, share my losses, and I'd just assume live that way.

I don't like to lie. I don't care for that. And I would like to live in a community where I trust my neighbors. I'd like to live in a community where I know my neighbors, and they know me, and that we're built together. I don't want my house to be a secretive house that's hidden behind a 12-foot-high fence that no one can ever see that I've deleted off of Google Earth.

I want my house to be an open door. I want everybody to know where I am. I want my dinner table to be filled with different people every day who are just passing through. I want my house to be a place of openness and love where I can use hospitality as a way to reach out and to build a community around myself.

And these things are in opposition--privacy versus hospitality. You know, that's tough. And so it's something that I have struggled with because being in a place of more public prominence brings different risks. It brings different attacks. It brings different exposure. And that's been very difficult for me to figure out how do I maintain a sense of openness and living openly, which is important to me, while also protecting my children.

How do I live publicly but also protect my wife? And as most of us find that we are increasingly distant from our neighbors for whatever reason, there's a consistent erosion of trust that's happening in the U.S. American culture. And I don't have a good answer for that. I don't know how to solve that.

I hate where we have come to as a U.S. American society, and I hate where I think we're going. I despise it. Because every time you watch a political activist dox their political opponent, every time you see a Twitter activist say, "We're going to expose this person, and then we're going to go and punch a Nazi in the face," or every time you watch somebody swat somebody else because they don't like what they said or they were offended, or every time--I mean, it's just--you look at it and you say, "This is a legitimate danger.

It's very infrequent so far, but I don't really care to be swatted. That's not something that I really want to happen." And so how do you solve it? I have no idea. I have a few--that was an incorrect statement. I don't know. I have some ideas, but it is a tension, and it is a tension that I don't like.

Because my personal values of openness and honesty and hospitality and love and community involvement do seem to be in conflict with privacy, secrecy, security, and how you solve it is--I don't know. I don't know. If you have any good suggestions, feel free to let me know. I think ultimately you have to walk in faith in whatever you're doing, and you have to be confident in whatever you're doing, and you have to trust that you are taking the actions that you should take for your specific situation.

But the technological question, in my opinion, is relatively easy. The philosophical question is not. And with that, I will quit for the day. Peace out, y'all. Shop break-resistant glassware at WineEnthusiast.com so you can spend more time and less time-- I'll get the broom. Shop our Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for the best prices of the season on wine storage, gifts, and more.

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